I watched a lot of sports this week. My very short recap is coming
My Posts From This Week
As always, we start things off with the previous episode which you can find it here
This week’s anti-MLM post is about MLM companies pretending to be small businesses (surprise, right) in order to get into craft fairs. It’s as you would expect, tho. You can read up on it here
This week’s Writing Prompt is also MLM-related with a side of crypto. The second part will be coming in the next edition, but here’s where it stands right now
And we end things off with Eurovision, where we welcome 4 new entrants to Junior Eurovision and an update on an online contest that I’m taking part in
My ‘Actual’ Adventures
Once again, my actual adventures were had offline. I’ve been catching up with friends and family, planning for a Halloween party (note: there’s no anti-MLM post this Monday), and my followed sports teams are doing pretty good. Kind of. I got one in the World Series (Philadelphia Phillies), the other is undefeated (Philadelphia Eagles), one who is really picking up the pieces since last season (Phoenix Suns), and one who finally got a win (Orlando Magic, my local NBA Team btw).
No posts to share this week. When my spectrum ass finally gets its gear going, I’ll bring it back
As you can tell by the title, I pretty much stayed away from WordPress this week, but I was able to make my posts. Without further ado, let’s go
My Posts From This Week
We always start with the previous episodes, so if you want to catch up, here it is
This week’s anti-MLM episode takes a look at huns using tragedy and death to sell their products. I reacted to 10 posts showcasing everything from anniversaries to more personal tragedies, and you can read all about it here
As mentioned earlier, I stayed off WordPress this week to focus on other things, but I will have a full slate of posts for the upcoming week. However, I do want to turn your attention to some things I was fixated on this week, including the MLB Postseason, the NBA Season, voting in an online song contest, and reading up on a reporter in Iowa who is an out-and-proud trans (and she’s also terminally online. I’m with you on that, Nora)
No posts to share this week. When my spectrum ass finally gets its gear going, I’ll bring it back
I switched up Writing Prompt Wednesday is react to some famous quotes. I don’t think anyone has done that before, so I might do another one next week. Next week, I might have a different title than Writing Prompt Wednesday, so stay tuned
This week, I was busy with work, so I didn’t get to do the things I wanted to do. However… I watched some sports, especially the MLB postseason games. I also watched the final January 6th hearings before the midterms and man, did we get some tea out of that. I also found out that a favorite journalist of mine got into some major trouble in Thailand, and I am disappointed in her. And her cameraman. Don’t film active crime scenes, y’all.
Favorite Posts From the Week
Normally, I would end with some of my favorite posts, but because I haven’t gotten the chance to read other blog posts, I will leave this blank. I hope to have this feature back next week
This is the 7th episode and I got a lot to get through, so here we go
My posts from the past week
As always, we start with the previous episode, so if you missed my adventures between blogging and preparing for Hurricane Ian, you can read it here
This week’s anti-MLM post focuses on high school mean girls who somehow turn into hunbots, or who got manipulated into joining MLMs and you would think there’s a correlation.
I didn’t have time to come up with a prompt this week, so I pulled up one that I did some time ago and added it here
And we finish the week with some Eurovision news, and y’all, we got content
My ‘Actual’ Adventures
Considering it was my first whole week since Ian hit my state, I decided to check back on things that I had to postpone, and while I had a few hiccups along the way, it was all smooth sailing on this side. However, I mentioned yesterday that I am participating in an online song contest on a sports forum and we are among the 41 countries that are taking part, so I’ll probably be busy ranking the other songs and giving points to my top 12 favorites this upcoming Saturday if needed.
In other news, my mail-in ballot for the upcoming midterms came in and I quickly filled it out and sent it back. My sister and mom also voted. If you haven’t voted yet, please check with your state’s voter registration office before the deadline. This election is too great to ignore and democracy is at stake. That’s all I can say about it. Take it what you will
My Favorite Posts From The Past Week
I’m bringing this section back after postponing it from last week, so check out these posts from my fellow WPers
I lived through Hurricane Ian and I am here to put together another episode of this WordPress-exclusive series
My Posts from the past week
As always, we start the week with a previous episode of WordPress Adventures. If you missed episode 5, we got it here for you
This week’s anti-MLM post takes a look at Elomir, the compensation plan, the fallout if you will, and their social media strategy.
Despite Hurricane Ian messing around with his back-and-forth forecast of whether or not Volusia County would get hit (we lost), I made my third Writing Prompt Wednesday, and this time is a poem (which is all I could muster because what else can you do when you have to prepare for a huge storm coming your way)
I was able to play around on WordPress despite Hurricane Ian coming this way. Okay, it went to the Naples/Ft. Myers area, but in Volusia County, where I live, we were drenched. And I mean, we were drenched. My family and I stayed at home while Ian unleashed his winds on us, but we survived unscathed. We lost power for 29 hours this time (6am Thursday to almost 11am Friday) but as I mentioned in my Friday post, we were blessed. The images from Naples, Ft. Myers, and even through Central Florida tho… yeah, crazy. As for being on WordPress, I had to play catch up
Favorite Blog Posts From This Past Week
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to read and feature blog posts from around WordPress because of preparing for Hurricane Ian, but this segment will be back next week.
This week’s anti-MLM post looks at the MLM ‘war’ on 9-5 and why they shit on it so much. Plus, I decided to do a text reaction to another anti-MLMer’s video. I might do a more spoken reaction in the future, but for now, this will do.
This week’s writing prompt is about a child asking her aunt about an event that the child didn’t know actually happened in her aunt’s life.
I have hit 500 all-time views, so I did an analysis of when and where they came from, and it was interesting, to say the least. I will be doing this again when I hit 1000 all-time views.
And we end the week with a Eurovision recap, along with some songs that were on my radar.
My ‘Actual’ Adventures
So I woke up early Sunday morning and saw that I have hit 100 likes and 500 views. I want to thank you all for stopping by and reading my posts. I really appreciate it. Apart from that, I really didn’t do anything spectacular on this blog apart from writing posts for the following week and exploring the reader app. In fact, most of my ‘adventures’ this week were spent on Qmee, and I don’t regret it one bit.
Also, I started tackling my depression this week. Yes, I have depression, not crippling, but enough to drain energy from me most days. I am trying to find a skin and hair routine that works for me and for my dry skin and textured hair. So far, I use Sulfur-8 to deal with my scalp and Dove for my skin. I’m not sure if it’s early to make New Years’ Resolutions, but finding a routine is on top of my list. I also want to explore my hometown because I’ve actually been home-bound and don’t really go out much for the past 7 years (yes, even before COVID) and I guess being a homebody and a pacifist has clouded my judgment on everything, hence why this blog is my stepping stone.
Aaaaaaaand there’s a tropical storm / hurricane coming my way, so this next week should be fun /s
Favorite posts from the week
And I want to close out this episode with some interesting posts from fellow WordPress bloggers from this past week.
This past Monday, WordPress sent me a notification saying that I have hit 500 all-time views! First off, I want to thank everyone who came to my site and read at least one post or just landed on my homepage. Secondly, and it’s really not mind-blowing, I started this blog over a month ago to give my thoughts on my favorite hobbies and topics. Because I was not socially active on social media (read: social media lurker) and was absolutely shit at marketing my blog, I wasn’t really expecting anything but 5 views in the first week, so to get to 500 all-time is just awesome. I thought I would look into the insights for this very blog.
All of the photographs are as of Monday, September 19
As of the time I took these screenshots, I had already surpassed the threshold at 521 viewers. With 287 unique visitors, that’s 1.82 pages per visitor. 26 comments were left across all my posts, with 15 of them from me responding to others. And as you can see, August 26 was my best day so far with 64 views, owing to me updating older posts to add TTS video posts that day
Apparently, Friday at noon comprises of a bit more than 1/5 of all views. Weird, since this very post will be out today (Friday) at noon.
Moving on to referrers aka where my views came from. I did remember commenting on Renard’s post about promoting on social media and he mentioned that the WordPress Reader app got him the most views. I noticed that too, and when I saw the stats, it was obvious. 118 views came from the reader, followed by search engines with 16 (with 12 from Google, meaning my site isn’t sandboxed anymore). Twitter came next at 13, then Instagram at 12, with Facebook rounding the top 5 at 8, although how someone found my website through likewordle.com is baffling to me.
As for the countries, those 521 views came from 44 countries (11.84 views/country), with my home country the United States coming way on top. Here’s a breakdown of the countries and the number of views I’ve gotten
The US sits alone on top at 247 views (47% of all of the views recorded), with Kenya in second with 53, Trinidad and Tobago is third with 30, Canada in 4th with 24, the United Kingdom with 21, and India rounds up the top 6 with 20. The other countries all recorded less than 10 views. Slovenia was the latest country to enter the database.
All of this is just amazing considering that one of the biggest pieces of advice I’ve gotten when I started out was a general “slow and steady wins the race” advice, but it’s a good one. Obviously, it’s not a big blog (yet) but I feel great and motivated to bring more anti-MLM, writing prompts, Eurovision, WordPress Adventures, and other content to you, so I will encourage you to follow this blog, like, share, and comment on posts. I don’t really have a desire to have a mailing list right now, but when it gets big enough, I might go that route. For now, I’m happy with the direction of this blog. Tomorrow, we’ll do a musical wrap-up on the week.
Last week, I did my first writing prompt and I had a lot of fun with it. If you missed it, here it is
This week, sticking with the dialogue category, my writing prompt provided by Reedsy via Written World Media is: Write a short story about a first date, a reunion between old friends, an argument that gets heated, an adult explaining something to a child, or the reveal of a long-hidden secret.
It mentioned using dialogue, but to make things easier, I’m going to do a script between an adult and a child in which a young girl (Trisha, 11) asks her aunt (Sally, 35) about a historical event (9/11) that she thought was long ago, but her aunt gives her own experience, signaling that it is not the case
Trisha: Sally, can I ask you about 9/11?
Sally: What do you want to know?
Trisha: We are learning about what happened on September 11 in history class, but I don’t know if anyone who went through it is still here. My teacher said it’s been about 21 years.
Sally: Yes, there are a lot of people who are still around who have gone through it. 9/11 wasn’t really that long ago.
Trisha: It hasn’t?
Sally: No. In fact, I, your aunt Veronica, and your dad Jerry all went through that as kids. I was 14, Jerry was 16, and Veronica was 12 when the planes hit the twin towers in New York City. My brother (Jerry) was in his finance class (11th grade) and he remembered his teacher turning on the TV to watch the news. Some of the students, including Jerry, watched in awe. My sister (Veronica) was at her gym class (7th grade) when the PA system went off. She didn’t get to watch a bit of it until her next class. I was in math class (9th grade) and our teacher turned her TV on but without sound. Throughout the day, one by one, the towers fell, then there was one that flew into the pentagon. Jerry saw that live. There was another plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, but we didn’t know until later that it was related to 9/11. It was the worst and craziest day of our lives.
Trisha: Did people die?
Sally: Yeah, almost 3,000 of them. That’s why people always say “never forget”. That’s why every year, families go to New York to read out the names of their relatives that died that day.
Trisha: But my teacher also said that some people don’t think it’s real. Why would people call events in our history books fake?
Sally: Oh, Trisha, I don’t know what to tell you about that. Your dad has met people at his job who think it’s fake, and some were alive when it happened. And it’s far from the only event that people question the validity even though it happened. Which events have you learned about already?
Trisha: Well, we started with World War I, then we did the Great Depression, World War II, the civil rights movement, and now this is the last major event we’re learning about this year.
Sally: World War II. That’s another event that people like to twist facts about, especially the part about the Holocaust.
Trisha: Yes, the Holocaust. 6 million Jewish people died there.
Sally: Yes, that’s correct. But there are people who are even questioning the number of Jewish people that died there. Why? Some are anti-semitic, and others follow along with it even though it’s completely wrong. All of them are the same people who call 9/11 an inside job.
Trisha: So, 9/11 was a real event?
Sally: Yes, and that is the lesson I want to give you. Whatever is on official records is real. The things people say to divert you from official records are untrue and must be pushed back. I don’t know if your teacher is going to cover misinformation and disinformation, but if not, I’m sure by next year you will learn about it.
Trisha: I think I want to know more about how people get information on events
Sally: It’s an interesting topic, I can tell you that. That’s why your mom Megan (sister-in-law and Jerry’s wife) is advocating for the country’s true history to be taught in classes.
Trisha: Yeah, mom was saying something about people not knowing US history, but I didn’t know why that is.
Sally: I think you will go deep into it. You seem like you’re interested in it.
Trisha: I’m just fascinated by it. I might do something about it when I grow up.
(And so Sally and Trisha spent the day going through some more historical events with Megan joining in halfway through)
Fewer posts, more quality… that’s how it goes, right?
I’m not gonna do a day-by-day post like I did in the last three editions. Instead, I’m going to recap my posts for the week as well as some posts I feel like sharing from my favorite bloggers
My posts from the week
Obviously, I start with a recap of last week’s episode, where I reviewed a survey app and gave a long tutorial. (The 3rd WordPress Adventures Episode)
I made a post via inspiration from a fellow WordPress blogger as well as two digital artists (one is my sister). I also discussed three cases of high-profile plagiarism, two of which are from journalists. I will admit that upon making this blog I never actually thought about people stealing content for clout. After I finished it, I’m also taking measures to protect myself.
I did my first writing prompt, and I thought I did a good job. I actually enjoyed doing this for a number of reasons, among them that I prefer doing this over poems (I cannot do poems for the life of me) and writing prompts, poems, and other writing-based posts are in high demand, so I just wanted to see how it goes. I’m doing another one next week.
So I re-added the home page because I finally figured out how to customize it to my liking. I might change my theme again now that I got what I wanted out of placing a “blog posts” block when I edited the home page. By the time you read this, I will have a different theme and a real home page, although I’m kinda still working on that, but it’s literally the hardest page I’ve made on here (even harder than some of my posts)
Favorite posts from fellow WordPress Bloggers from the past week
Sunday, September 4: I worked on a couple of upcoming anti-MLM posts for this blog. One will be out by the time you see this, but the other one will be coming the following Monday, September 12. I am starting research on another anti-MLM post that will be coming the following Monday, September 19. I think you know where this is going. Anyway, if you missed last week’s episode, here it is
Monday, September 5: It’s Labor Day here in the US, so I got down to writing. I started a writing prompt post and a post about stealing content that I will publish next week. Every Monday is Anti-MLM Monday, so this week, we look at manipulation tactics used by huns to recruit and maintain their downline
Tuesday, September 6: I published my 25th blog post, which is about how I turn my post into text-to-speech using anchor.fm, YouTube, and my native Microsoft Video Editor. It’s a long one and even I was surprised by how many screenshots I took to make this post.
Wednesday, September 7: I didn’t do a lot of writing, but since I’m pulling back from posting daily to posting 3-4 times a week, I decided to focus more on using the WordPress Reader, both on the web and on the app. Today, I started following a few anti-MLM blogs and liked some of the posts from those I have already interacted with (and even left a comment). I mentioned in a comment left on someone’s post that though I am the least sociable person, I will slowly make an effort to interact with fellow bloggers here. With that being said, I finished a post endorsing the survey app Qmee and it was published today
Thursday, September 8: Busy, busy day today. Watching the coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II for starters. My sister’s boyfriend celebrated his birthday. We were treated to a nice steak dinner, so that was cool. Speaking of, I posted about my personal weight loss journey.
Friday, September 9: It was an off day, but I did publish a post about the NFL season. I must say, I’m excited about it.
Saturday, September 10: It’s Eurovision Saturday, so here’s this week’s ESC post. I’m still waiting for the online song contest on a sports forum that I’m a part of, so I’ll keep you updated about when it starts and ends.
This upcoming week, I will have an anti-MLM post, as well as a post about stealing content and I am also trying out a writing prompt. I did that in a form of a script because I find it easier to start off with than writing an actual story. I’m also taking a couple days off from posting next week to see how the traction goes. I’m starting to experiment here to see how my blog performs.
The Most Inconsistent Person in the World 